February 05, 2009

25 Things (About The Real Me)

I got hit by that latest Facebook tag meme, in this case the "25 Things" thing doing the rounds where you have to list 25 things about yourself that your long-suffering Facebook friends might find illuminating (or more likely not). Since people do actually sometimes ask about my real-life me (usually in email), here's the rather hurriedly-put-together Facebook list of 25 things you may or may not already know about my real-life self (slightly edited):

1. My real name is J. Orbison Legrande III.

2. I once piloted Air Force One.

3. I can speak eleven languages fluently; five more with some difficulty.

4. Most of my photos are fakes — I spend literally months drawing each one in excruciating photo-realistic detail by hand, then use Photoshop to make them look like photos.

5. I was born in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, up near Shreveport.

6. I swim to work most days.

7. I write for the New Yorker under a pseudonym.

8. When I was a teenager I made a living composing heroic poetry to order in a traveling sideshow. Two bucks a poem. It was an OK living, but that sort of thing really takes its toll after a while.

9. My Australian accent is totally fake; I've never even been there, let alone lived there long enough to get an accent.

10. My father knew Lloyd George.

11. I never eat pasta; it's a religious thing.

12. A friend of mine is afraid of butterflies.

13. I made up the whole "Woy Woy" thing (with the help of Spike and some other co-conspirators who I'll name in my memoirs) — it's all fake. There's no such place (the name's a bit of a giveaway, isn't it?).

14. I feel really bad for making up the Woy Woy thing. It's sort of exploded out of my control and taken on a life of its own; I wish I could take it back.

15. When I lived in northern Minnesota I used to pretend to like ice fishing just to get on with my colleagues.

16. My first kinetic sculpture exhibition was raided by the Carabinieri because a jealous ex-lover had told them it defamed the Pope.

17. When I taught classical philology at Oxford I was known as "The Hammer".

18. I have twelve siblings. Two of them are currently in Antarctica.

19. For the first few months I feared that I would never get used to living in Ittoqqortoormiit, but after a few years it started to feel like home.

20. There's a prime number named after me.

21. I now deeply regret inventing the amphibious car. It's been the bane of my life, in ways too numerous to mention.

How swiftly and cruelly the frozen wastes of my past catch up with me; I thought a hidden life of art in this vast city of commerce would inoculate me from remorse, but I was wrong. The memories are still fresh; the pain intense; the regrets too stifling. I'll be back on the floes next year; this time the interest and pleasure will be real, I assure you.

Yeah, and I'm still waiting for a replacement for the mini submarine you wrecked when we were circumnavigating Greenland, toots. You give me the submarine, I give you the laser. Fair swap?! You didn't have to run away to Paris just to get out of this, you know.